Adam Dunn is striking out once every 2.7 plate appearances, even more frequently than his career rate of 3.5. / Dennis Wierzbicki, USA TODAY Sports

by Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY Sports

by Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY Sports

Baseball folks have learned to wait until some 40 games â?? a fourth of the season â?? have been played before drawing any definite conclusions. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with numbers after three weeks.

There are plenty of eye-popping statistics out there, and some of them may have lasting power. Here are some facts and figures that caught our attention while perusing box scores and other means of baseball information.

***

One hundred and Dunn: It's not rare at this time of year to spot an everyday player, even an All-Star like Elvis Andrus, lugging around a .200 batting average. A hundred points below that is another story.

Adam Dunn's seventh-inning home run Sunday finally lifted his average into triple digits, and now it sits at .108. You'd think such futility is unsustainable in the long term, but that's no sure bet with the Chicago White Sox DH. It was only two years ago that Dunn batted â?? and we use the word advisedly â?? a meager .159, falling six plate appearances short of setting the record for lowest batting average ever.

This year's offensive ineffectuality comes with a distinct whiff of swings and misses, as he's striking out once every 2.7 plate appearances, even more frequently than his career rate of 3.5.

***

No freebies: Now fully back from the Tommy John elbow surgery that cost him the 2011 season, St. Louis Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright has been stingy in giving up runs â?? a 2.48 ERA â?? and positively miserly when it comes to bases on balls. In 29 innings, Wainwright has yet to walk a batter, giving him a nifty 28-0 strikeout-to-walk rate.

***

Won't walk away with it: Wainwright may go a full season without issuing a base on balls if he got to face Jeff Keppinger all the time. A career .284 hitter, Keppinger is off to a .153 start with the White Sox, but what's more startling is his .149 on-base percentage. The veteran infielder has not walked once in 74 plate appearances, and because of two sacrifice flies, his OBP is lower than his batting average.

Keppinger has always been equally tough to walk as to strike out â?? in nine seasons, he has 179 BBs and 182 Ks. But he may be trying to justify the three-year, $12 million contract he signed with Chicago in the offseason by swinging away.

***

Errant ways: Shortstops Ian Desmond of the Washington Nationals and Ruben Tejada of the New York Mets are not reminding anyone of Ozzie Smith. Well, Tejada is batting .220, so maybe at the plate just a bit.

But defensively, Desmond and Tejada have committed seven and six errors, respectively, putting them on pace for more than 55 for the season. They both figure to straighten out, but for reference's sake, the record for most errors by a shortstop since 1940 is 61 by Al Brancato of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1941.

***

Painful gain: Shin-Soo Choo's career .385 on-base percentage made him an appealing candidate to lead off for the Cincinnati Reds, who acquired him in an offseason trade. And sure enough, Choo's .523 OBP is tops in the majors. But he's gone about boosting that stat in a most painful way, getting hit by nine pitches.

That's more than twice as many as the next most-frequently plunked hitter, Kevin Youkilis of the New York Yankees with four. Because we love silly projections, we can tell you Choo is on pace to getting drilled 77 times, which would obliterate the single-season record of 51 set by Hughie Jennings in 1896.

Ron Hunt's modern-day mark of 50 in 1971 would also be surpassed, except at some point Choo is likely to get fed up and charge the mound, drawing a suspension that would wreck his pace.

***

I ain't missing you: Nobody can replace the wit and wisdom of Chipper Jones, but Juan Francisco and Chris Johnson have done a pretty convincing job of impersonating the retired Atlanta Braves icon at the plate.

The worst ever?: We all expected the fire-selling Miami Marlins to be colossally bad this season, but worse than the not-even-pretending Houston Astros? Not only is Houston's 5-13 mark better than Miami's 4-15, but the Astros have done considerably better in run differential with a minus-34, compared with the Marlins' minus-46.

Miami's .211 winning percentage projects to a 34-128 record over a full season, so maybe the standard-setting New York Mets of 1962 have hope their 40-120 mark will finally be eclipsed.